Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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105 of 105 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Sangean HDT-1 is a winner, December 20, 2006
I like the HDT-1, it's easy to set up and use, I like it's high tech industrial design, I love the blue display, it looks like my satellite receiver. On stations that are not using the Ibiquity format (HD Radio), it will read the RDS data employed by many broadcasters. It's conventional AM and FM reception is good compared to other AM/FM tuners in it's price range, but it's HD reception is only adequate, at this juncture, there are no other HD tuners in this price range. I tested the HDT-1 tuner in a metropolitan area and it quickly located dozens of HD stations on the FM band and a few in the AM band. Not every market has a lot of HD station, check before buying an HD tuner. If you do not live in a metropolitan area, near the HD station, reception will be spotty and will require a roof top antenna, the included AM and FM antennae are for local reception only. When the HD signal is weak, the tuner switches to regular analog demodulation, where I live, 65 miles away from most of the transmitters, I only get four stations solidly in HD, and I have a good attic antenna system.
Please don't consider HD Radio High Definition, it is NOT high definition, it is a digital format that means terrestrial radio broadcasters may employ multi-casting, more than one program stream on the same frequency, and that's very cool. HD radio may provide a cleaner signal with no hiss on moderately weak stations. The audio is not CD quality but it's quite good, it employs MPEG encoding, it sounds like an iPod, if that's all you've heard, HD Radio is fine. MPEG is also used on satellite radio, it's the reason they can cram so much in a narrow band.
The following is an addendum to my original review.
The following contains some techno gibberish, don't sweat it, it won't hurt. The HDT-1 outperforms all my previous FM tuners, it hears stations my other tuners can't. Buried in the Info menu is a Signal Strength Indicator ( helps aiming your antenna! ), a Bit Error Rate display and a Carrier to Noise display all very interesting. I have found reception varies day to day, I now receive as many as 10 HD FM signals, on bad days only 4, HD Radio propagation is a very complex issue that taxes many Engineers, NPR's engineering department has posted some interesting data on that topic.
Some folks are suggesting things they want to add, though a TOSLINK output would be nice, I believe it is an imperative that Sangean add the ability to manually toggle HD demodulation since marginal signals bounce between the HD stream and analog, very annoying sometimes. End of dweeb rant.
Bottom line, this is a fine product, the Sangean HDT-1 is a winner.
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112 of 115 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic Tuner but Audiophiles beware, February 23, 2007
I had been researching HD Radio for some time and was eager to hear it but since no retail store seems to be able to actually demo the technology, I decided to purchase the HDT-1 from Amazon. Great price.
First off Amazon delivered the tuner in two business days - great job. The HDT-1 is easy to set up, simple to use and nice to look at. The remote works well. I have not noticed the problem with the display being too bright although I have noticed the clock lagging behind. Not a big deal.
As for the technology, the tuner tunes beautifully. I live outside of Washington DC in the Maryland suburbs and have had no trouble picking up all of the area radio stations and all with the strongest signal and in HD. There are lots of HD channels and secondary channels and virtually all of them come in with the strongest signal using the supplied antenna. As a comparison, the smooth jazz channel was inaudible on my regular stereo tuner but was crystal clear on the Sangean. This is a great piece of technology. But,
As for sound quality, I was concerned about the compression codecs used in this technology. I had read that HD radio encodes at 96kps and frankly this is what it sounds like. While crystal clear, the music is a bit dull and lacking in energy. It certainly is not "CD quality." In my opinion, 96kps is too much compression for someone who is into sound quality. I typically download my music at 256kps if not 320kps and there simply is no comparison in the quality of the mp3's streaming from ITunes wirelessly to the stereo and the HD radio direct connection. The mp3's encoded at 256 or above are far superior in sound quality to the songs encoded for HD radio. This is the unfortunate truth about HD Radio. At this point, while it is superior to satellite radio in sound quality, it is not ready for prime time audiophiles.
So, the Sangean HDT-1, while a great tuner, can only reproduce the quality of the radio source that goes into it. Thus, Audiophiles beware.
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24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
AT Last... An Affordable HD Tuner !, February 1, 2007
This is the first affordable tuner on the market that makes use of a new DIGITAL broadcasting system, developed by Ibiquity Digital. In a nutshell, local FM and AM stations can now broadcast a digital signal along with their analog signal. The digital transmission "fixes" a couple of long-standing reception problems, i.e. "multipath" distortion on FM and "static" and noise on AM. In addition, AM can be broadcast in stereo using this system. Additional information such as song title/artist etc. and Secondary channels may also be transmitted. For more info on this system visit Ibiqitys' website.
In the Portland area, for example, there are now 12 FM stations and 2 AM stations already transmitting in HD digital, and 9 of the FMs transmit a (for now, commercial free) secondary channel. See the Ibiquity website to obtain a list of stations transmitting in digital in your area. In addition, there is now a HD station in Eugene (slightly over 100 miles away) that I can receive in HD about 80% of the time (using an outside FM antenna). KZEL (96.1) is the FIRST non-Portland HD station in Oregon.
I have had the Boston Acoustics "receptor" table model for almost a year. While the receptor is a fine table radio, I really wanted a tuner to plug into my audio system. The HDT-1 is a perfect choice for this application. This tuner is very selective and sensitive. Remember, however that due to FCC restrictions, the transmitted power of the FM HD signal is only 1/100 of that of its "host" frequency, so tuner sensitivity and a decent antenna are both important in receiving HD signals.
Sangean HDT-1 tuner does a fine job of decoding the HD signals, including the secondary channels. When a station is selected, the normal analog signal is first heard for a few seconds, while the digital "buffer" is filled. When the radio switches over to digital, the improvement in reception is many times quite dramatic.
AM reception is not as good as it could be, but IMHO, it is better than the AM reception on the BA receptor. An external antenna can improve this. If the AM reception were slightly better, I would upgrade to 4.5 stars rating. In addition to AM HD Stereo, my HDT-1 DOES seem to support the old analog Motorola C-Quam AM stereo, at least I hear something that sounds like stereo on one station in Portland that is still using this system (KBPS-AM 1450).
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